Damien Wilde / Android Authority
TL;DR
- YouTube is testing a new notification system.
- If you are subscribed to a channel you don’t visit much anymore, YouTube will automatically reduce push notifications related to it.
- Google is doing this to prevent users from turning off push notifications altogether, as they can become overwhelmed by alerts they don’t care about.
Let me know if this sounds familiar to you. Years ago, you subscribed to a YouTube channel. At the time, you were really into it, so you set notifications to “All” to always get a push notification on your phone when something happened there. However, over time, you became less interested in the channel. Now, you still get notifications about the channel’s activities, but you don’t care, so the alerts are just annoying chatter you swipe away.
Google knows this kind of thing happens. Unfortunately, Google also knows that many people deal with this not by unsubscribing from that specific channel but by turning off YouTube notifications altogether. This is not ideal for obvious reasons, so Google is testing a new system that intelligently reduces notifications for subscribed channels you don’t visit much anymore.
Now, this won’t affect the channels you visit regularly. If you’ve engaged with a channel recently and it has “All” notifications activated, you’ll still get a slew of push notifications related to it. But when you stop interacting with that channel, notifications will reduce over time without you needing to do anything. It’s a win-win: you get fewer alerts you’re not interested in, and Google reduces the chances of you shutting off notifications completely.
This is just a test, so there’s no assurance that it will actually go into effect for all users. However, it seems like a terrific addition to YouTube, so I hope it does make it out of the testing phase.
